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Sustainable Management of Mine Induced Water
Published in Sheila Devasahayam, Kim Dowling, Manoj K. Mahapatra, Sustainability in the Mineral and Energy Sectors, 2016
Muhammad Muhitur Rahman, Dharmappa Hagare, Muttucumaru Sivakumar, Raghu N. Singh
Australia possesses world’s largest reserve of diamond, gold, iron ore, lead, nickel, rutile, tantalum, uranium, zinc and zircon. For other minerals namely, antimony, bauxite, black coal, brown coal, cobalt, copper, ilmenite, lithium, manganese, silver, tin, tungsten and vanadium rank in the top six worldwide (Britt et al., 2014). Globally, Australia is ranked fifth (behind China, the United States, India and Indonesia) as a coal producer (Britt et al., 2014). Most of Australia’s black coal is located in Queensland (QLD) and New South Wales (NSW). The Bowen Basin in QLD and the Sydney Basin in NSW dominate black coal production in Australia, which contain about 60% of the nation’s black coal reserve. Black coal is also available in the Surat, Clarence-Moreton and Galilee Basins in QLD and in the Gunnedah Basin in NSW. In terms of brown coal, most of the reserves are located in Victoria (VIC) with approximately 93% in the Latrobe Valley. For another important mineral, that is iron ore, Australia possesses the largest reserve in the world and ranked second as an iron ore producer. Most of the iron ore mines of Australia are located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia (WA), which is about 89% of the total reserve of Australia (Britt et al., 2014).
Research Initiatives for the Remediation of Land Following Open-Cut Coal Mining in Central Queensland
Published in M.H. Wong, J.W.C. Wong, A.J.M. Baker, Remediation and Management of Degraded Lands, 2018
D.R. Mulligan, A.H. Grigg, T.A. Madsen, A.B. Pearce, P.A. Roe
In central Queensland on the east coast of Australia, the Bowen Basin covers some 32,000 km2 extending 550 km north to south at latitudes between about 20 and 25° south. It is approximately 100 km east to west at its broadest section, and about 175–300 km inland from the coast (Figure 3.2). Coal reserves in the Bowen Basin and the outlying basins of Blair Athol and Callide are estimated at 26,000 Mt, and these support 23 mining operations with a total rated production of about 87 Mt yr−1, most of which is won by open-cut operations (Queensland Coal Board, 1995).
Detrital zircon U–Pb geochronology of Permian strata in the Galilee Basin, Queensland, Australia
Published in Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, 2018
L. J. Phillips, C. Verdel, C. M. Allen, J. S. Esterle
The Carboniferous to Middle Triassic Galilee Basin (Figure 1) of central Queensland is commonly inferred to have formed in a low-accommodation, intracratonic setting (Allen & Fielding, 2007; Van Heeswijck, 2006, 2010). This basin is linked, however, both stratigraphically and spatially, with the adjoining Bowen Basin (Figure 1), and the development of the Bowen Basin was clearly related to both extensional and contractional tectonism during west-dipping subduction along the east Australian margin (e.g. Korsch & Totterdell, 2009; Korsch, Totterdell, Cathro, & Nicoll, 2009a). The extent to which the Galilee Basin may also be related to convergent margin tectonism is unclear. One line of research for addressing this uncertainty is evaluating the provenance of Galilee Basin sediments. In this study, we combine new detrital zircon U–Pb results from Permian strata of the Galilee Basin with previous petrographic and geochemical datasets. In particular, we address the question of whether provenance shifts in the Galilee Basin may be related to the first-order, Cisuralian (early Permian) to Triassic tectonic framework of northeastern Australia. Our results are useful for evaluating the Galilee Basin Permian stratigraphy proposed by Phillips, Esterle, and Edwards (2017c), as well as examining potential changes in provenance of the Galilee Basin during the Permian.